Sidman Avoidance Paradigm

[Mike]

To any and all that may be able to help,

I am attempting to program a Sidman Avoidance paradigm. The idea here
is that a subject is learning 2 instrumental associations. In this
task, they are told that they are being attacked by two vehicles, and
only by pushing a button can they delay this attack. They do not know
which of the buttons delays which of the two attacks - but they are
told that they must figure both buttons out in order to advance to the
next round. When they push a button, the attack is delayed by 5
seconds. If they do not, they are attacked every 2 seconds. This
happens independently and simultaneously for each vehicle.

Other facts about the task:
- The subjects will be able to respond at any time.
- They will respond during both attacks and fixation (ie, the break
between attacks).
- There is no maximum to the amount of responses they can give.
- However, there IS a maximum delay period. That period is 5 seconds.
So, the subject can push a button that delays a certain attack 50
times, and during the time that they are pressing that button, they
will never see the attack that is pushed back by that specific button
- but after the 50th response, that attack will appear 5 seconds
later.

So, the timing should actually be rather easy to program. The real
challenge comes in displaying the two attacks that subjects are
delaying. So, think about the situation I described above - where one
type of vehicle (a tank, for example) is attacking the subject. They
can delay this attack with the push of a button. Now add another
vehicle (a plane, for example) that behaves in the same exact way. The
only difference between these two vehicles is that they are delayed by
two different buttons. So, even if the subject is pressing the button
that delays the tank, they can still be attacked by the plane every 2
seconds, unless they push that button as well.

So, I need to keep track of 2 keyboard responses, and two display
screens - and the real kicker is that they should be able to be
displayed simultaneously.

The attack should begin with subjects being attacked simultaneously by
these two vehicles, and they will know that the buttons at their
disposal correspond to one of the vehicles. Again, their task is to
figure out which of these buttons corresponds to each vehicle.

I know that is a lot to process, but I really appreciate your help.
Thank you,
Mike

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